There are many instant foods that are to be reconstituted with hot or cold water. Dried foods are used in the instant foods. Particularly in the field of cup noodles, meat-based dried foods (dried ingredients) such as char siu (roast pork fillet) are much used.
Such meat-based dried food has to be reconstituted by pouring boiling water thereto in about 3 to 5 minutes. In order to allow reconstitution in a stated time period, the size (thickness) of meat-based dried ingredients has been important.
That is, although there are some differences depending on types and production methods of dried foods, if a method wherein heated meat is frozen and dried in the frozen state under reduced pressure (so-called freeze drying method) is used, it is possible to reconstitute the dried meat with a thickness of approximately 10 mm at the maximum in about 3 to 5 minutes, depending on types of the meat and production methods. In contrast, if the thickness is 10 mm or more, it has been often difficult to allow reconstitution in about 3 to 5 minutes.
If it is possible to achieve meat-based ingredients with large thickness, it becomes possible to provide consumers with voluminous instant food. Additionally, along with diversification of tastes of consumers, needs for meat-based dried ingredients with large thickness are increasing.
As a method for enhancing reconstitution properties, disclosed is a method for producing dried meat in which, after a sugar solution is injected such that the sugar content is 5% by weight relative to the raw meat, the meat is heated, sliced into a thickness of 3 mm or less and dried (Patent Literature 1). If this method and the freeze-drying method are combined, the possibility of producing thicker dried meat is promising.
However, there has been a problem that the taste influence on the dried meat is large because the content of sugar is high in the method.